"By the end of the year, a new agreement system with family doctors will be implemented to serve those who do not yet have a family doctor," said Ana Paula Martins.

The minister told the deputies that, in addition to the future Model C units, which will be managed by the social and private sectors, the new agreement system will constitute "another way to expand general and family medicine coverage to those who need it most."

"We still have much to do in primary health care to effectively ensure that it serves as the gateway to the SNS, especially to be able to cope with one of the greatest demographic shocks ever experienced by the Portuguese population," the Minister acknowledged.

According to Ana Paula Martins, the coverage rate of users with a family doctor is currently 85.7%, "countering the downward trend of the last four years."

Between April 2024 and August 2025, 326,000 more patients gained access to a family doctor, the Minister of Health stated, adding that, due to demographic change over the last seven years, the "resident foreign population has almost quadrupled."

In this sense, the number of registered users and users of the National Health Service at least once increased from 405,000 in 2017 to over 944,000 in 2024, Ana Paula Martins added.

At the procedural hearing, the minister also emphasised that, after last winter's "successful" emergency services response, the summer plan "also went smoothly," claiming that between June 1st and the end of August, there was a 41% overall reduction in the number of days of emergency room closures.

On August 15th, a barometer for being "the worst day of the year" due to health professionals' vacations and the fact that it was a public holiday, in 2024, "13 obstetric emergencies with problems" were recorded, while in August 2025, there were eight, the minister said.